Tangible, a financial technology firm aiming to modernise debt access for hardtech businesses, has raised $4.3 million in a seed funding round led by Pale Blue Dot.
The investment saw participation from several other venture capital firms including MMC, Future Positive Capital, Unruly, SDAC, Prototype Capital, and Aperture, as noted by Tech Funding News. The company stated it has now raised a total of $8 million including grants, though its valuation remains undisclosed.
The new capital will be used to expand Tangible’s team and develop its existing products, with the goal of reducing transaction costs and speeding up the time it takes for hardtech founders and lenders to finalise deals.
The financing gap in hardtech
The company addresses a specific funding challenge. Hardtech companies, which develop physical technologies like energy systems or advanced hardware, often require large sums for capital expenditure long before they are considered stable enough for traditional debt financing. This forces them to rely on costly equity funding, which can slow growth and dilute ownership.
Tangible’s founders, Will Godfrey and Sebastian Abdy Saboune, aim to bridge this gap. Their platform standardises the data, documentation, and reporting that lenders require to underwrite debt, making it easier for them to finance asset-heavy companies earlier and at scale. For founders, the service acts as a structured finance partner, potentially opening the door to faster, cheaper debt financing and reducing over-reliance on equity.
The context for this is a vast projected need for infrastructure investment, estimated by BlackRock at $68 trillion globally by 2040, and a private credit market worth $3.5 trillion that is poised to meet some of this demand.
Competition and company composition
On the competitive landscape, Tangible acknowledged other platforms operating in areas like project finance and tax credits, describing structured finance as a multi-trillion-dollar industry with significant nuance. The company also shared its diversity statistics, reporting that one of its three founders is female, two are from minorities, and its overall team has a 40% female to 60% male ratio.
Investors backed the firm’s core thesis. Hampus Jakobsson of Pale Blue Dot stated that innovations shaping the future are “fundamentally physical” and should not be financed by venture equity alone, expressing belief in Tangible’s vision to accelerate growth. Tangible’s CEO, William Godfrey, argued that legacy financial processes are insufficient for the speed at which hardtech companies now need to scale, driven by trends like reindustrialisation and the race for technological sovereignty.
